How to Start a Food Blog

Updated February 28, 2016: A lot has changed in the world of food blogging since I first wrote this post in 2014. Today, a lot of my original theories and recommendations have been overhauled in the text below to reflect this changed landscape. This post will be continuously updated, and reflects as much as I have learned about writing a food blog, up until now.

Introduction

It’s been almost six years since we took our first photograph of a sandwich and posted it on the internet. Since then, our blog has seen tremendous growth. From Away now has almost 1,000 posts, and averages approximately 150,000 unique visitors per month. That traffic and level of exposure has led to promotional appearances for the state tourism board, as well as to paid contributor positions with other websites and print magazines, television appearances, and even a book deal. We’ve developed strategic relationships with both local and national advertisers; in fact, the site pays our rent, every single month. We’ve met tons of fascinating people, and learned the stories of many of the people who help keep Maine’s foodservice economy running.

We didn’t get lucky. We started the site after food blogs were supposed to be already “over,” during an era when the very idea of a “food blog” was already starting to become cliche. We didn’t have the carefully cultivated personalities of a Pioneer Woman or a Julie Powell, and we certainly didn’t have the lucrative book, television, or movie deals. Every day, we continue to work on the site, whether that’s developing new content, finding new revenue streams, testing ad networks, reworking design elements to drive visitors to overlooked parts of the site, or tweaking plugins to improve site functionality. We’ve learned a lot, and we wanted to share some of the tips we’ve picked up along the way with anyone interested in either starting a site of their own, or improving their existing food blog. In this post, we’ll try to cover everything we’ve learned so far, in an effort to help both new aspiring food bloggers, as well as more established bloggers looking for ways to increase their revenue or improve their existing websites.

Evaluate Your Motivation and Level of Dedication

When Jillian and I first started working on From Away, we weren’t even sure it was ever going to see the light of day. We had just moved to Maine after spending four years in Mexico, and the food blog landscape was already crowded to the point of oversaturation. We’d spent $400 acquiring the “From Away” domain name from a domain squatter, unsure of exactly how we were going to develop it or what we were going to do with it, but certain that it was too good a name to pass up. [blockquote author=”” pull=”pullright”]”For the first few tentative posts, were were unsure of exactly what we wanted to add to the local food blog scene.”[/blockquote]For the first few tentative posts, were were unsure of exactly what we wanted to add to the local food blog scene. We weren’t sure we had any business commenting on local restaurants, we didn’t really know how to take decent photographs, and we weren’t convinced that we could find a way to be funny while writing about frozen burritos. (Actually, I think we’re still uncertain of some of the answers to those questions.) From the very beginning, though, we knew that if we were going to add yet another food blog to the world, we were going to treat it as a real business from the very first day.

If you are considering starting a food blog, the very first question you should be asking yourself is: Why?

What are your goals for the site? Are you content with a simple journal of your cooking exploits, and less concerned with building a readership, or making money? That kind of food blog certainly has its place, and running that type of site is certainly a lower-stress proposition. There’s a lot of freedom in writing a blog that no one reads, where you don’t have to be mindful of consistent voice or tone, can publish new posts as you feel like it, without giving a thought to topic choice or improving your skill as a photographer, and can spend 2,000 words talking about your peanut butter and jelly-eating parrot, if you feel like it.

The trouble is that blogs like this are tough to sustain. As bloggers, we all have the idea (even if we don’t admit it), that we are going to attract readers who are going to loyally return to our site every day, peppering our comments sections with thoughtful feedback. That’s why we publish in a democratic medium with hundreds of millions of users, rather than write our thoughts in a secret journal that we keep in the nightstand, and it’s why we continue to publish on a “dead” medium like blogging, rather than just spouting off on social media. Every one of us, even those who claim to be writing a blog “just for fun,” have the expectation that sooner or later, the readers will show up. If they don’t, your motivation will evaporate.

In my opinion, there is one major remedy to this near total indifference: You have to publish high quality content every single day. Readers hitting your site for the first time should see consistently updated, fresh content, and they should know that if they come back the next day, there will be something new to read. That’s the only way to get people returning to your site several times a day, checking to see if you’ve updated yet. These can’t be throwaway posts, either; everything you publish to your site needs to be a carefully crafted, professionally-photographed piece of content that will either teach or inform. Then, the next day, you need to do it all over again, and be comfortable with pushing the previous day’s work out of the spotlight after just a brief 24 hours.

This constant demand for new content, this constant churn, can be challenging. It requires a lot of time, as well as the ability to not become emotionally attached to a post that requires an emotional attachment in order to make it compelling. Tough, right? Your writing has to be good, but it can’t be precious. It has to be important enough for you to work on each day, but not important enough that you will be crushed if it doesn’t receive a huge response (or worse, if it receives negative criticism) and is gone from the front page of your site the next day. You have to care about your site more than anything else, and somehow manage to not care about it at all. It’s a challenging balancing act, but treating your blog as a business is the only way to attract a consistent readership.

As you get started planning your food blog, ask yourself: Do you have the time to run your food blog as a real business? Can you attract a loyal readership by updating your food blog every single day? Can you learn to take a decent photograph, in a field that’s already ridiculously crowded with unbelievable talent? Can you handle the constant turnover of new content on your site? Are you comfortable with the notion of complete strangers occasionally being ruthlessly mean to you for no reason? If the answer to any of those questions is “no,” I would gently suggest looking for a more rewarding hobby, such as playing air guitar, taking pictures of icicles, or riding roller coasters. If, on the other hand, you are ready to make the commitment to your new site, congratulations. You’ve taken the first step towards creating an exciting new food blog.

Choosing a Blogging Platform for Your Food Blog

Your choice of blogging platform is one of the first important decisions you will make for your new food blog. There are three major options: Typepad, Blogger, and WordPress (in both the hosted and self-hosted varieties).

For the less technically-inclined among us, Typepad can be a great place to get your feet wet with food blogging. You can start your site immediately on their hosted blogging platform, they have beautiful site design templates, and you can get your new site up and running with just a few clicks. With Typepad, blogging is as simple as typing. Their technology handles the rest. When you’re ready (and if you decide food blogging is for you), it’s easy to buy a domain name and associate it with your site (Typepad will even handle this for you), and they offer a surprisingly robust theme editor, stat tracking tools, and options to generate revenue with your new site.

Blogger continues to be a puzzlingly popular choice for new food bloggers. I don’t recommend it, for a few reasons. First, though it is easy to get up and running with Blogger, you will quickly become frustrated with the lack of customization options available to you. Blogger blogs all look like Blogger blogs, and developing a customized look and feel for your site is difficult when your hands are tied by the limitations of the software. Basic functions, like associating a domain name with your Blogger blog or moderating comments, are needlessly complicated and frustrating. Most importantly, though, is that as a hosted service, you never really “own” your blog; Blogger can, at any time, shut your blog down, effectively seizing its content and repossessing the custom Blogger site name that you have worked so hard to develop.

If you are serious about your new food blog, there’s really only one choice in blogging platforms: WordPress. WordPress is the most popular blogging platform on Earth, with over 75 million WordPress-powered sites in the world. It has quickly risen from being just another piece of blogging software to the number one content management system in the world, with armies of developers, incredible support communities, and programmers working around the clock to extend the platform’s core functionality to do almost anything you’d like on the internet. Want to start a food blog? WordPress can do it. Want to start a Craigslist-style job board, a Citysearch-style city directory, or a full-featured real estate website? WordPress can do those things, as well, using an easy-to-use interface that makes administering your new site easy. WordPress is infinitely customizable, and when you want to add some sort of custom function to your site, you will never hit a wall with WordPress.

You can choose to use the hosted version of WordPress, or to download the free software yourself for use on your own site, with your own hosting and domain name. This is only marginally more difficult than using the hosted version (you can get the software up and running in just a few clicks), and offers even more options for customization as your site continues to grow. The learning curve might be ever so slightly steeper (though again, I must stress how easy to use the software is), but the investment is worth it. As more and more of the web is powered by WordPress, learning the basics now is anything but a waste of your time. As your blog’s needs grow and change, having an understanding of WordPress means that your site will never be left behind. In my opinion, the self-hosted version of WordPress is the best possible choice for anyone starting a new food blog.

It’s true that there are lots of free or low-cost hosting plans out there in the world. Some of them even have funny television commercials, or quasi-celebrity endorsers. However, most aren’t a good option for a food blog. Why, you ask?

Most free hosts add your website to the same server with thousands of other sites, all of which share the same resources, including CPU cycles and memory. The result of hosting your site in these kinds of cramped quarters is that your website responds slowly, and may even suffer from timeouts when people try to come see the brilliant new post you’ve spent two days working on.

Worse than that, though, is the kind of questionable characters, spammers, and pornographers that are drawn to free or inexpensive hosting plans. Often, your budget hosting provider will put these same websites on the same IP address as your perfectly innocent food blog. It’s not totally clear what this will do to your search engine position, but think of it this way: Would you shop in a grocery store or eat in a restaurant that was sandwiched in between an adult movie theater and a bong store? Probably not. In internet terminology, these blocks of IP addresses are known as “bad neighborhoods,” and they certainly aren’t a good place to start your new website.

There’s one more reason to avoid free or cheap hosting for your food blog. The way we promote food blogs is different than other websites. With submissions to photo sharing sites, and links generated through social bookmarking, food blogs are more likely to receive sudden spikes in traffic when a particularly delicious recipe goes viral. Your web host needs to have systems in place to handle these kinds of traffic surges. Otherwise, you can suddenly find your shiny new site crippled by a sudden influx of visitors from Reddit or StumbleUpon, sending your thousands of new visitors to a “Not Found” page. Not a great way to make a first impression.

The solution that we have used over and over again is to start your blog on a low-cost, extremely reputable host. Down the road, as your site starts to buckle under the weight of the hundreds of thousands of visitors who are flocking to your site each month, you can upgrade to a dedicated host. Here’s the process we use, each time we launch a new website or food blog:

1. Launch new food blog on inexpensive shared hosting from Bluehost, and get a free domain name.

Almost every time we start a new website, we choose Bluehost as our hosting provider. There are a few advantages to their service. The first and most important benefit is the cost. Bluehost costs just $5.95 a month, making it a perfect place to test your new website concept, all while keeping your site under budget as you focus on getting the word out about your new site to readers. The second big bonus to using Bluehost is the free domain name. When you set up a hosting plan with Bluehost, they’ll register your new domain name (like FromAway.com) for free. It’s another simple way to get started with a professional food blog, without letting your startup costs get out of control.

An inexpensive service is completely meaningless if it’s lousy, and fortunately, Bluehost excels with their features. Their most basic package includes unlimited bandwidth and storage, as well as outstanding customer service if you ever get stuck or need help with anything. My favorite feature of Bluehost, however, is in their load balancing. If your site suddenly receives a huge influx of traffic from a popular post on Tastespotting, Bluehost is able to seamlessly handle the flow, keeping your site online and making sure your new visitors see your site, not an error page.

If it sounds like I am excited about Bluehost, it’s because some of our most successful websites began on Bluehost. I really can’t recommend them any more highly, for either new or experienced food bloggers.

Though the shared hosting you get with Bluehost is more than sufficient for any website or food blog that is just getting started, there’s going to come a point with any successful site where you may have to consider moving to a dedicated server. In a nutshell, a dedicated server hosts just one website: Yours. That means your site can handle as much traffic as you can throw at it. We host From Away on Media Temple’s “(dv) Dedicated-Virtual 4.0 – 1 GB” plan, which is enough to handle our current traffic, as well as leave a little breathing room for increased popularity down the road. Media Temple not only helped us with the migration from our old shared host, but they’ve handled every single customer support inquiry quickly, and with knowledge and courtesy. They’re an independent company that we recommend highly for any food blog that is receiving more than approximately 4,000-5,000 visitors per day.

It’s one of the most expensive options, but if you find that the more technical aspects of managing your blog hosting become overwhelming, or if you have such a high amount of traffic that you just can’t keep up with things like caching technologies or server optimization, it may be time to switch up to a host that specializes in the special needs of an extremely successful WordPress site. Said quite simply, the single best host for this type of specialized WordPress management is WP Engine. They host some of the largest and most successful food blogs on the planet, including the Foursquare and Williams-Sonoma blogs. Their managed hosting plans offer improvements to speed and performance that are completely beyond the capability of typical web hosts. WP Engine also provides free backups, and a repair concierge service in the event your website is ever attacked or hacked. As soon as you reach the point where your food blog turns you into a minor celebrity, it’s time to consider upgrading to a customized, managed hosting solution from WP Engine.

As you can see, it is possible to start your new career as a food blogger with free hosting. It’s just not a strategy I would recommend. At first, it may seem smart to spend as little money as you possibly can while you’re just getting started. However, the frustration associated with free web hosts, including working with their limited or nonexistent customer service departments, the super creepy websites that are likely to be on the same shared server as your food blog, and the unreliability of their networks, all make it a bad cost saving measure in the long run. Your new food blog deserves the best possible start you can give it, with as few roadblocks to future development or growth. Choosing a proper web host lays a great foundation for the successful future of your food blog.

Choosing a Theme or Template for Your Food Blog

It would be impossible to ever completely sift through every available option, when it comes to the tens of thousands of WordPress themes that are available for your new site. There are many free options, but they come with wildly varying levels of programming quality, documentation, and support. When considering a theme for your new food blog, the ability to customize things easily, the theme’s SEO features, and the availability of support if (and when!) things go awry are all important factors to consider.

Though it may cost a few extra dollars at the beginning of your food blog’s life, when you’d much rather be spending money on restaurants to review or fancy ingredients to cook with, purchasing a premium WordPress theme will save you a lot of work in the long run. What makes a WordPress theme “premium?” Typically, premium WordPress themes for food blogs have extra features and functionality, a custom administrative backend that makes it easy to make changes to your site without doing any programming yourself, and a good separation of code and design so that your website will start out with a basic level of search engine optimization right from the start. Unlike most free WordPress themes, your purchase price usually includes some basic support, should you ever need help with getting your theme installed (or sometimes, even with more advanced customization).

As far as I am concerned, there are four major choices, when it comes to finding a gorgeous premium theme for your food blog.

Elegant Themes
Elegant themes has nearly 150,000 customers, and sells more than 75 unique and, well, downright elegant themes. Many of them would be a perfect fit for a food blog. In my experience, their support has been excellent, and their focus on clean, uncluttered themes is on-trend and perfect for a new food blog. You can purchase themes individually, or pay $39 for instant access to every theme in their collection, which makes it easy to try different looks for your site. In particular, be sure to check out these themes: My Cuisine, eNews

WooThemes
WooThemes is arguably one of the top premium WordPress developers out there right now. They do things with WordPress I never would have believed possible, including fully responsive designs that automagically adapt to mobile devices and different screen resolutions. With top-notch support and nearly 100 of the best-looking WordPress themes available, you’re certain to find something that would be a good fit for your food blog. In particular, don’t miss: Delicious Magazine, Fresh News, The Morning After, Bueno

Both WooThemes and Elegant Themes offer premium WordPress themes for your food blog, at very reasonable prices. Eventually, though, your blog’s needs will probably outgrow the capabilities of even the best off-the-shelf premium themes.

If you want to pick a theme just once, and be certain that it will serve you for the lifetime of your blog, you probably should consider investing in a blog framework. You can think of a blog framework as a sort of “master theme,” to which bundles of modifications and customizations, called “child themes,” can be applied. In a nutshell, this means applying one major theme framework on top of your fresh WordPress installation, and making any changes you can think of to that framework. This allows for complete control, via a customized backend interface unique to the framework you choose, over every single aspect of the appearance of your site.

In my mind, there is just one major player left in the blog framework market, now that “Thesis” has fallen out of favor for many food bloggers.

Genesis Framework by StudioPress with “Foodie Pro” or “Brunch” Themes
Every theme by StudioPress uses the Genesis framework, a sort of “master theme” similar to Thesis that sits on top of your WordPress installation. We use Genesis on ProFoodBlogger, our food blog about, well, food blogging. The Genesis framework features a completely custom administrative backend, and a hook system that allows you to make extensive customizations without changing a single line of code.

Genesis also provides groundbreaking SEO capabilities, without the use of external plugins. There’s custom title tags, custom meta descriptions, and custom meta tags, as well as the ability to add your own custom URL for each individual post. Right now, the two most popular “child” themes for Genesis seem to be “Foodie Pro” (which is currently the number one selling Genesis child theme of all time) and “Brunch,” both designed by the very talented Shay Bocks, a designer who truly seems to have her finger on the pulse of what food bloggers (and readers) want to see.

Additionally, we also recommend the Eleven40 child theme, which features a clean design with plenty of whitespace around each element, as well as gorgeous typography.

Simply stated, the Genesis framework by StudioPress is the only blog framework available now that really matters. For the average user, the child themes offered by Genesis mean you can create better-looking sites, without getting your hands dirty with lots of code. More advanced users will find plenty of power under the hood, as well. Genesis is suitable for powering blogs of any size, and is fairly future-proof; you don’t have to worry that your blog’s theme will suddenly stop being supported, or will be rendered obsolete by changes to core WordPress files. Choosing Genesis means that you will never hit a technological roadblock, as your food blog grows and you want to add additional features.

Useful WordPress Plugins for Your Food Blog

One of the best things about choosing WordPress to power your food blog, is the near limitless functionality added by the ongoing creation of thousands of independently-developed plugins. This list is by no means complete, but it does include some must-haves, as well as some plugins specific to food blogging that don’t get talked about a lot. The possibilities are nearly endless, but here are a few of the plugins we use on our food blogs, that we install right after getting a vanilla WordPress installation up and running.

Akismet: It won’t be long before your site starts receiving tons of spam comments. Akismet handles this spam perfectly, ensuring that the spammers never make it onto your site, with very rare false-positives.

Easy Recipe: A plugin for gorgeous formatting of the recipes on your website, with automatic creation of Google’s recipe schema, for inclusion of your recipes in Google’s recipe search results.

Facet WP: As anyone who has been food blogging for a while knows, setting up an index of recipes can be a real bear. I’ve tested dozens of plugins and category configurations to accomplish this task, but nothing makes setting up a recipe index simpler than Facet WP. The plugin isn’t free, but it is a life saver.

Nrelate Most Popular and Related Posts: These two plugins allow you to create backlink-free collections of the most popular posts on your site, as well as a collection of related posts at the bottom of each post. There are also built in monetization tools, which will swap out one of your own links for a paid link to another, related website.

Widget Logic: Widget Logic allows complete customization of your sidebars, by conditionally showing widgets. You can choose single pages to show widgets on, or designate widgets to be shown only on the home page or on archive pages. It’s a great way to display different content based on which page your reader is on.

WP Google Maps: This premium plugin allows you to create customized Google maps for embedding on your site, that can link back to other parts of your site. This is a great tool for building visual directories of restaurant reviews.

WP Render Blogroll Links: As your blogroll grows in size, including it in the sidebar of every page can become a bit unwieldy. This plugin publishes your blogroll to its own WordPress page, freeing up valuable room in your sidebar.

Marketing, Promoting, and Generating Traffic for Your Food Blog

One of the biggest obstacles when starting a food blog is figuring out how to get people interested, and coming back to visit your blog each day. Without readers, it’s difficult to stay motivated, no matter how much you may think that you are doing this project just for yourself. If no one reads your blog, you may find that over time, your posts get further and further apart, which only makes people visit your site even less. We employ a multi-pronged approach to generating traffic:

Publish every day, or at least publish on a consistent schedule. As I mentioned way back in the introduction, the most important crucial step to attracting readers is to publish every single day. This keeps readers coming back, because they know that every time they hit your site, there will be a new piece of exciting content to read, or something delicious to cook. If you can’t publish every day, try to establish a schedule, publish that schedule, and then stick to it. I can’t stress this enough. [blockquote author=”” pull=”pullright”]When readers get the sense that your posts are becoming less frequent, or are arriving at irregular intervals, they will move along to something else.[/blockquote]When readers get the sense that your posts are becoming less frequent, or are arriving at irregular intervals, they will move along to something else.

Build relationships using comments and social media. This means more than just setting up a Facebook page, and auto-publishing your new posts to that page. At a minimum, you’ll want a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a Google Plus page, a few dozen Pinterest boards, and an Instagram account. Post on them regularly, and encourage people to follow you using a good social media plugin that puts “share” buttons on every one of your posts. Post not just links to your new posts, but also short, everyday thoughts, food photos that may not warrant a full-blown post, and, perhaps most critically, links to the cool things that other bloggers are doing on their sites. Nobody likes a social media channel that just endlessly flogs the author’s own work; highlight what other people are doing, and cultivate relationships with other bloggers you admire. To that end, leaving the occasional comment on blog posts that you especially enjoyed means that people will probably return the favor with a visit to your site. Be sincere, and don’t leave cookie-cutter comments (one blogger I know always leaves comments like: “Wow! That’s one tasty looking [insert recipe name here]!” It’s insincere, and it’s annoying). By now, bloggers can smell link-building schemes from a mile away, so don’t bother interacting with another blogger’s post unless it truly moved you in some way.

Use Pinterest, Instagram, and “Food Porn” sites to share your best photos.Pinterest is the number one referrer of new visits to our website, by quite a wide margin. A post that goes viral on Pinterest can bring you traffic for years to come; as of this writing, our months-old post on how to make American cheese has been shared over 316,000 times on Pinterest, and continues to bring new visitors to our site every day.

Before the explosion of Pinterest, there were just two big names when it came to sharing photos of food on the Internet: Tastespotting and Foodgawker. The premise was simple. Write a recipe, take a picture of the finished product, and submit the photo to the two sites. Your submission is reviewed by an editor for quality (a sometimes maddening process with criteria that can seem arbitrary), and if your photo is published, the post will drive hundreds of visitors to your site.

The advent of Pinterest removed the editorial selection process from the equation, putting the power to choose which photos achieve Pinterest popularity directly in the hands of the users themselves. Tastespotting and Foodgawker can still drive traffic to your site, however, and taking a few minutes each day to submit your latest photographs is well worth your time. As the popularity of the sites has increased, editorial standards have gotten a bit stricter, which can make it tough to get your photograph published. If you’re having trouble getting published with Tastespotting or Foodgawker, try one of the dozens of copycats that have sprung up in their wake; most of them are hungry for submissions.

Work with other bloggers or offline media to swap guest posts. Introducing a new voice to your blog occasionally (as well as contributing a post to someone else’s site) is not just a great way to liven up your content; it’s a great way to promote yourself. Work the relationships you have made, and ask about guest blogging opportunities on other sites; a post about your killer pancake recipe with a link back to your own site can attract tons of new readers, who may turn into regular visitors. If you can land a guest post on a major website like Serious Eats, you’ll not only attract new readers to your site, but you’ll earn a valuable backlink, which will in turn raise your presence on the major search engines. You can also look for opportunities (which are often paid) to contribute to print publications; I am a regular contributor to a few print magazines, and though I can’t track how many people are coming to the site after reading my byline, I’m convinced that at least a few people have to be checking us out from those offline sources.

Consider paid placements. If you have a few dollars to spare, it’s easy to set up an advertising campaign on Facebook. Facebook provides sophisticated targeting, allowing you to show your advertisement only to specific geographic areas, or to users with specific interests. You can also set a daily spending cap, so that Facebook’s zillions of daily impressions don’t unexpectedly run up a huge bill. Google Adwords has a similar program that will allow you to get started advertising your site for just a few dollars per day.

Finally, track your results with a good statistics tool. In order to see which of your marketing methods are bringing the most traffic to your food blog, you’ve got to track your stats with a good tool. Google’s own Analytics tool is the gold-standard of free statistics tracking; a small snippet of code on your site tracks trends in your referrals (as well as several other complex metrics that, frankly, I don’t really use). Install it, and you’ll know more about your visitors and their surfing habits that you could ever dream of.

Improving Your Food Blog Photography

I’m always completely stunned at how many food blogs are illustrated entirely with amateurish, grainy, harshly-lit iPhone photographs (and you guys, those Instagram filters aren’t doing your food photos any favors, either). It’s not just tiny, independent websites that may not know any better; food blogs sponsored by major print publications still sometimes continue to employ cell phone-powered cameras as their only photographer.

Here’s the problem. Perhaps more than any other type of blogging, food blogging depends on at least passable photography. It’s not enough to be able to write compellingly about food; readers have been trained by food magazines and cookbooks to expect to be able to see your subject, whether you are talking about a recipe for cinnamon-swirl french toast, or the latest meal you had out at a local restaurant. As part of your passion for food, it is your obligation to learn to photograph it properly, so that your food looks as appealing as it tastes. What’s more, learning to take a good photo of food is indispensable for gaining entry to the high-traffic food photo sharing sites I mentioned earlier.

Food photography and styling is a specialized subset of regular photography that you can study for years. It’s one of the most challenging things to shoot (which is part of what makes getting a beautiful shot of food so satisfying). These days, competition in the world of food blog photography is fierce, where it can seem like every single other blogger on the planet is taking better photos than you are. At least, it seems that way to me, a lot of the time. I’m certainly not an expert, and my food photos have a looooooong way to go, but here are some of the resources that have gotten me to at least a basic level of capability behind the lens:

Food Photography: From Snapshot to Great Shotsby Nicole S. Young
Provides the basics on getting the right camera equipment and takes you through the key photographic principles of aperture, ISO, and shutter speed. Also discusses lighting and composition, and shows how to style food using props, fabrics, and tabletops.

Confessions of a Foodie Bride’s Photography Series
The Foodie Bride presents tips that you can start using to improve your photos immediately, in an easy-to-follow and understand format. This series covers everything from basic lighting setups to prop styling.

The Serious Eats Guide to Food Blog Photography
Shooting food photographs for a blog is different than shooting for a magazine or a print ad. Often, you’re dealing with low light, weird light, or other “in the field” problems. Serious Eats has written a great guide to tackling these issues.

The Pioneer Woman’s Photography Blog
Though her hyper-oversaturated food photos kind of drive me mental, I stand in awe of Ree’s self-taught skill as a portrait and landscape photographer. Also, don’t miss her Photoshop action packs, which bring one-click tuneups to your photos.

Pinch of Yum – Tasty Food Photography
One of the single most helpful books on food photography I have ever read, written by an accomplished food blogger (just like you!). Even better, all of the proceeds from the sale of the book go to charity, so you can hone your skills AND help a worthy charity at the same time.

Making Money with Your Food Blog

This is one of the biggest questions I get asked about food blogging. If you’re investing your time every day, as well as your money (in the form of camera equipment and fancy meals), there’s got to be a way to make a living as a food blogger, right?

The short answer is: No.

The long answer is: But maybe. I’ll elaborate.

[blockquote author=”” pull=”pullright”]Unless you find a new way to hilariously combine photographs of cats with frozen food reviews, it’s unlikely that you will make a fortune food blogging. [/blockquote]Unless you find a new way to hilariously combine photographs of cats with frozen food reviews, it’s unlikely that you will make a fortune food blogging. At least, not at first. In the beginning, you won’t even cover your ingredient costs. For most, it will take somewhere between two and five years of consistent, quality posts before you will have the opportunity to start making any kind of real money with your food blog (and by “real money,” I mean, “more than what you’ll pay for a few lattes”).

Why? Most ad networks work off the “CPM” model, or “Cost per Thousand” impressions of an ad banner. If you find a network that pays a $2 CPM, it means that for every thousand page impressions, you’ll earn two bucks. Get 10,000 pageviews, and you’ll earn twenty bucks. And if this seems like a reasonable way to make a living, you probably don’t live in a country where a gallon of organic milk costs six dollars. The simple truth is that until you have a lot of traffic, you are not going to make a living from your food blog.

Until you have at least 100,000 readers per month (and realistically, you could argue that you can’t make any real money from a food blog until your unique visits are more in the range of a million per month), those tiny checks from your different revenue streams aren’t going to amount to much. For the first few years of your blog’s life, focus on creating content that people will want to read, strengthening relationships with link partners, and honing your skills as a writer and photographer. When your traffic levels justify it, here are a few potential revenue streams for food bloggers. We use nearly all of them.

There are a few things that make BlogHer special. First, they have a huge sales team that is dedicated to selling your blog to potential advertisers. The relatively high level of quality of the sites in their network mean that BlogHer can pay a higher CPM, which can average as high as around $7 or $8 dollars, depending on the time of year. They have multiple ad sizes available (though there are some restrictions about where on your site you can place these ads). If they don’t have an ad inventory sufficient to fill the traffic your site gets, they will run either low-paying “remnant” ads, or, at your request, you can set up a “waterfall” with your other advertisers to ensure that an add from SOME network is getting shown in your available ad space. This combination has so far been the most successful for us. Finally, there are special opportunities several times per month (which you will learn about via email) offering lump-sum payments for product reviews or promotional tweets about a particular product.

Sell ad space on the local level. If your food blog has a local bent, you may find success selling banner ad space to local companies. There are several WordPress plugins that will turn your food blog into a full-fledged adserver, but I am particularly fond of AdRotate. The features are too numerous to list here, but you have full control over your ads, including assigning “weights” to ads, randomizing their display, downloadable custom reports for your advertisers, and much more. Selling sponsorships back to the community that supports your blog can be an excellent bit of additional income.

Work your affiliate relationships. As a goal, aim to turn as many links as possible leading outward from your site into links that make you money. This can be as simple as signing up for an Amazon affiliate account and turning your book recommendations into paid links (though these don’t seem to pay much), to checking to see if any of the products you routinely recommend and endorse have affiliate programs that will pay for every new customer you send them. We’ve also been experimenting with a new technology called “VigLink.” The premise is simple: install a snippet of code on your site, and VigLink will automatically create unobtrusive affiliate links for as many of your outgoing clicks as possible, whether or not you have an existing affiliate account for that product. It’s an interesting way to work the affiliate angle, without signing up for dozens of accounts on your own.

Work for other people. As your food blog builds some momentum, you may find that one of its uses is as a sort of gigantic online portfolio. We have used our blog to pitch ideas to larger companies, as well as earn paid contributor positions with other websites and with offline print magazines. Your blog doesn’t have to be the way your blog makes money (if that makes any sense at all).

Write and sell an eBook. If you are an expert in your field, whether that’s photography or brownie baking, an eBook may be your ticket to making money with your food blog. The food photography eBook sold by the folks at Pinch of Yum, for example, has been very successful for them, adding around $1,000 dollars per month to their blog’s bottom line. The surge in popularity of tablets and eReaders has once again made eBook publishing (as well as the use of mIxed cApital lEtters) a viable method of publishing. There are tons of methods for turning your Microsoft Word file into an eBook, but Amazon’s own Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing is a great place to start researching.

Don’t want to spend time or money writing an eBook of your own? Consider selling someone else’s eBook, through an affiliate program. Pinch of Yum pays a percentage of all of their eCookbooks out to affiliates, and we’ve even recently started (shameless plug!) an affiliate program of our own, that pays over 60% of the sale price of our eCookbook right back to you, the affiliate. These types of programs can be a great way to get the needle moving on website revenue, without a huge initial outlay of effort.

Conclusion

Though food blogging may not provide the same direct path to fame, fortune, a multi-cookbook deal, and a show on the Food Network as it once did, there is still plenty of room for you to make your mark on this unique online community. Every day, people just like you pick up a camera, and start taking pictures of their latest meals or culinary creations. The best new food bloggers pair a dedication to their new blog, featuring regular updates and quality photography, with a compelling voice, whether serious, snarky, or funny.

Though you shouldn’t start a food blog under the mostly hilarious impression that you’ll soon be quitting your day job and blogging full-time, earning a bit of side income is certainly still possible. Those that are able to turn a food blog into a full-time job do so by treating their blog not simply as an online scrapbook of their cooking endeavors, but with the same level of professionalism and dedication that they would a full-time job. In fact, a successful food blog will require almost as much time to manage as a full time job.

Food blogging has rewards outside the realm of making lots of money (thank goodness!). As a successful food blogger, you can count on lots of people reading what you have to say each and every single day, which is certainly exciting. Most of all, though, our food blog gives us a reason to explore the culinary universe we currently inhabit. If it weren’t for the blog, we wouldn’t be cooking the interesting things we do, we wouldn’t be going out to dinner nearly as often, and we certainly wouldn’t be going out on giant 100-year-old ships to eat galley-cured gravalax. Our food blog has made us really consider food, really examine why we like the things we do, all while becoming more educated customers, better photographers, and better writers in the process. It’s worth it.

Next Steps/For Further Reading

Now that I’ve either confirmed your desire to become a food blogger (or made you rethink the whole idea), here are some resources for continuing to do research and to learn more:

Food Blogger Pro A community of food bloggers run by the folks at Pinch of Yum, offering video tutorials and a vibrant message board filled with bloggers helping bloggers.

Disclaimer: Please note that some of the links in this post are affiliate links, and I will earn a commission if you purchase through those links. I have used each and every one of the products or services listed above, and recommend them based on my positive experience with them, not because of the commissions that I may earn from your use of their services.

Malcolm Bedell is co-author of the critically acclaimed “Eating in Maine: At Home, On the Town, and On the Road,” as well as the taco-centric blog “Eat More Tacos,” and the junk food-centric “Spork & Barrel.” His contributions include Serious Eats, Down East, L.A. Weekly, The Guardian, and The Huffington Post and his food truck, “‘Wich, Please,” was named “Hottest Restaurant in Maine” for 2015 by Eater. Finally, he finds it very silly to be trying to write this in the third person.

Oh my word. So it’s work! A LOT of work. Nevertheless, an excellent guide for anyone interested in food- or other-blogging. I even found a few tips for my own little half assed, non-income producing, haphazard, occasionally-published blog.

Okay… I get emails pretty often from people who ask if I can help them in setting up their food blog… or mentoring, etc.! I’m totally sending everyone here from now on. You guys covered some great info here. Thanks for writing it!

Ditto what Lori said. The number of emails that come in asking how to start a food blog or some other advice about blogging are too many to even reply too. Now, I’ll just copy and paste a link! Thanks!

This was so helpful and packed with great info! I write a blog on gardening and outdoor living based out of Laguna Beach, California. I’m glad you endorse Bluehost. I am on GoDaddy right now and got burned yesterday when it crashed. I didn’t do my homework and just picked it a couple years ago, and pressed on. Now I hear the CEO is one of the bad guys! Anyway, I’m sharing this wonderful post (learned about it via FB through David Lebovitz!) with my blogging friends. I know this took a considerable amount of time to put together. Very generous of you! Thanks.

Thank you for sharing this with your blogging friends, Laguna Dirt! GoDaddy can be an okay place to get started (we still have somewhere around 50 domains registered with them) but their support can be a pretty do-it-yourself affair. When something goes wrong, and something always does, it’s nice to have rock-solid support there to help!

Thanks so much for these tips – I really appreciate that you have spent the time to write and post this.
I have been blogging for about a year now and I am loving it – I just need to work on my food photography now!

Thank you, thank you, thank you for such wonderful and useful information! It’s very timely especially as I seem to spend much of my time on the learning curve. There is so much to this entire blogging process and I really appreciate your sharing your knowledge.

Wow. Thank youx100. No matter how many “how-to” articles I read on blogging I always come away with new great advice (and a healthy dose of reality). Found you through Recipe Girl. Looking forward to exploring your site. Thanks again!

Quick follow up to the “shameless plug” departement. I can’t tell you how relieved I am to learn that I’m not the only one taking food pictures standing on my counter closer to the lightbulbs or worse yet on my well lit bathroom vanity. I’m heading to the hardware store tomorrow and will construct some portable clamp lamps. Great photo tips!!

Love the wealth of information in your article. Would you please explain the term “oversaturation” as it relates to photography? I have noticed that Ms. Drummond’s food photos all appear to have a dark hazy effect that does not appear in other bloggers’ photos.

Hi Betty! Ree bumps up the color on most of her photos. Think of it like this: If you took a color transparency (as from an overhead projector) and laid it over an identical color transparency, the colors would all be artificially boosted to several times beyond their normal levels. We do this a bit with our photos (vibrant color makes food look good) but I think she overdoes it a bit. Her blogs “photography” section is still a great place to learn more about food photography, and it’s a resource I wholeheartedly endorse.

I think the “hazy effect” you are referring to is what is called “vignetting,” where you see darkening at the corners of each image. It makes it look as though you are looking at everything through a tunnel. It’s meant to mimic an old effect from the print film days, but it’s easy to overdo and use too much.

wow, what if you’re not tech savvy enough to understand much of what you wrote (I struggled thru valiantly)? I think I’ll jus stick to following your blog. I was thinking about starting one about being a nearly 50 yr old equestrian, but it sounds like I ‘ve got lots to learn. Love your blog!

Oh, dear. I was worried about that. It’s tough, because I wanted to provide information for both those totally new to food blogging, and those who had been doing it a while. I’m sorry if some parts were murky…if there’s anything specific I can answer, let me know, and I will be sure to update!

thanks Malcolm, but it may be that I am just too old. it isn’t your fault. I am sometimes afraid of being so far left behind by technology that one day I won’t be able to get into my house. Sounds like everyone else was able to understand what you wrote. Which scares me further.

Excellent article Malcolm. It should be required reading for anyone thinking about starting a food blog, especially the section on motivation, goals and dedication. I don’t think publishing every day is a necessary for all blogs. However, in my experience the bloggers that don’t take the time to realistically evaluate what they’re trying to accomplish, the size readership they hope to build and what they’re willing to do to make it happen are inevitably disappointed.

Thank you very much, Anestes. I do think that setting expectations on the part of the reader is critical to gaining any kind of momentum, but I agree, this can be perhaps be accomplished through less regular but consistent postings, especially if those posts are insanely well put together. If I know a blog publishes on Monday and Thursday, I will return on those days for new content. But the moment they break that schedule? I’m off to read something else. Frequency is important, but consistency is just as big a factor.

Loved this! I have been blogging for over 5 years now, and things were SO different when I started. I am making a living off of my blog, but yes, it did take a lot of time to get there. And a lot of my revenue comes from work that I get from brands because of my blog. So many people think they can just write a food blog and make a ton of money, but it is really a lot of work. I work more than 40 hours a week – but I love it!! This is a great resource!

Thank you so much, Deborah. You’re so right…your blog becomes a part of where you make your living, but it’s not the be all, end all. Congratulations on your success, and I hope you’ll come back and read us again!

Seriously though, these are all awesome tips. I’ve actually been looking for a decent related posts plugin for my blog, so I’ll have to give Nrelate a try. Other ones I’ve used never seemed to work very well and always just sort of displayed completely random links that never seemed to even share the same tags or have much of anything in common.

I like nrelate a lot, though I wish I could limit their “popular posts” to things published in the last 30 days. Their “related posts” function works great, though, and the built-in tools to divert some clicks to sponsored posts works very well.

Thanks for such an in-depth article. I only wish I had read something similar when I was starting my food blog (more than two years ago:) I am afraid that I cannot switch course now, but I can always start another food blog and apply your advice:)

Thank you for such a great, in depth post! I’m new to food blogging and while sometimes I feel like just banging my head against the wall repeatedly, I know there are always more that I could be doing to bring more readers and display better, more consistent content. And thanks for a great list of links, super helpful.
Just found your site and I’m looking forward to checking it out a bit more!

Hi Malcolm,
Wow! what a fantastic, thorough, informative post! Thank you for this. Question for you, so I signed up to become a publisher with FoodieBlogRoll (which you don’t even mention above) and BlogHer at the same time. . thinking I’d go with whichever one approved me first. I’m still learning here. . but yeah, hands down, I can see that BlogHer is the way to go IF they accept me. So, my question is: I already have the FoodieBlogRoll widget on my blog currently (they got back to me immediately) and if and when BlogHer goes to “review” my blog and sees that there, will they immediately disregard me? They only accept blogs with a certain # of monthly page views right? any advice/input would be greatly appreciated. again, wow, thanks so much for the wealth of information.

Hi Alice! BlogHer won’t penalize you for having the FoodieBlogRoll code on your site. I’m not sure what your numbers look like, but just from the LOOK of your site, I’m sure you’re a candidate for BlogHer. (One unrelated note…it looks like your thumbnails on the home page are getting enlarged, which is making them kind of blurry. Might want to look into that.)

When I click through to the single posts, everything looks great (you have a beautiful design, BTW). But something funky is happening with the images on the home page…they are distorted and stretched out.

Thanks Mango! I was a little bit cautious about “tipping my hand” on a lot of the tools we use, but in the end, I wanted this post to be as informative as possible, which meant sharing everything I knew. I hope you find it useful!

Wow! Thank you for posting this. So useful and organized. A dear friend of mine and I have a tea blog and we discussing recently when we needed to keep our blog fresh and how we could get to the next level to keep ourselves interested and feeling rewarded for all the work that we put it. The blog post was timed perfectly for us! Some of the thing you mentioned we are already doing and others..not so much. It was wonderful to see the work that others are putting in as well getting some tips for things that we could be doing. So, thanks again! Sending her this way now :o)

Found this through the Irish Bloggers Association website today, it’s a really informative article and different from the other (tonnes) I have been reading as it goes into a lot more detail. Only problem though is that I use blogger and I kind of like…I must be a glutton for punishment! Thanks for sharing all your tips and wishing you continued success!

I know plenty of people (okay, a few people) who are happy with their use of Blogger. I just think that, sooner or later, you are going to want to switch. Because of this, I try to steer people who are just getting started to WordPress, in order to save them some work down the road. 🙂 Thanks for reading!

Thank you! Best post ever! I am relatively new to food blogging, just started a little over a year ago. Reading this taught me so much. I’m on Blogger and in the process or switching to WP. . Thankfully I choose the one you recommend, Bluehost and Genesis. Again, thank you for sharing such valuable information!

I’ve been blogging for over 6 yrs and still not making much money. I should look into moving to WordPress but I am nervous with the process.

On the bright side of things blogging as giving me a lot. I met wonderful people and this community is unique. I also have developed a good relationship with companies and, once in a while, will receive products, cookbooks or will be invited to events.

I tweeted about this post, it’s one of the best I have read so far. Thanks!!!

Thanks Helene! Migration to WordPress doesn’t have to be difficult, but I think you bring up a good point: Making money is not the be-all, end-all when it comes to blogging. There are plenty of other rewards.

With that said, though, I’ve been able to customize my food blog hosted on Blogger so it doesn’t look like all the others (at least, in my opinion). I think one of the bigger issues has to do with many food blogs looking the same and sounding the same in terms of how a post is set up, the tone it takes, and the way pictures are formatted. I don’t mind if layouts are similar as long as the content sounds like it’s coming from someone with a unique POV.

I just checked out your site, and you’re right! You managed an impressive amount of customization. For forward compatibility, ease of use, and the ownership issues I outlined, though, I still recommend WordPress over Blogger, though I realize that choice may not be for everybody. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

Wow, Malcolm, great write up. Too bad I’m screwing up must of your suggestions! I’ve read many of these “how to” guides in the past, but I must say, this is the most comprehensive and informative yet. Well done. Keep up the great work!

Great article. I definitely want to improve my photography. Low lighting is difficult even with an digital SLR. I dunno about posting everyday though. Maybe sometime in the future when I am better at all aspects of blogging.

Congratulations on a well-written piece with a lot of good information.

However, I do have to say that as someone who is making a *very* good living from my blog using Blogger, you seem to have missed all the improvements that have been added to that platform through the years. For people with very little technical knowledge, I still think it’s a good place to start. And for me personally, I have never found a good reason to leave. There are also other very, very successful blogs on Blogger like Skinnytaste, Gluten-Free Goddess, and Closet Cooking, to name just a few.

Thanks for writing, Kalyn. I do know lots of bloggers who have found success with Blogger. However, due to the issues I outline (particularly the ownership issues), I do continue to recommend new bloggers and less technically-savvy bloggers consider some of the other options, including Typepad or Tumblr. Again, thank you for your feedback!

Being a ESL person, I’m going to keep it short.
This is great, I have a successful blog in Spanish, I do South American cooking, but leaving in Houston I get lots of question about how to star a food blog.
Now I have 1 link to help them all.
Found you on David Levobitz newsletter 😉
Good luck and thanks for taking the time to tell the true about Food blogs now days.

Thank you so much for all of your work in putting this together. I am a former pastry chef (self taught) who now stays home with my babies. I have a 6 year old son, a 9 month old daughter, and a new baby due in May! I cook from scratch most every day amd love to get the family involved. I’ve been wanting to start up a food blog for quite a while but just couldnt figure out where to begin, and all of the info out there is a bit overwhelming for us non-technical folks out there. Your information and advice is succinct and straightforward, I really feel like I can tackle this now! Thank you so much!

I do have a follow-up question for you though if you don’t mind. I read quite a few blogs and for those bloggers with families/children, some mention people by their own name amd others seem to use “code names” for kids, spouse, and other associates. Is there any plus or minus associated with mentioning my family directly? For example, if I blog about my son helping me roll out bread dough tonight, is it better to say Luke worked the rolling pin, or assign him a name just for the blog (“Monkey worked the rolling pin…)? Also, any advice or thought on posting photos of family or myself while working in the kitchen and/or enjoying the food afterward?I really appreciate your help and look forward to receiving your input on these issues!! Thank you again!

P.S. I pinned your American cheese recipe a few weeks back and my husband and son love it! 🙂

thank you. Thank You. THANK YOU!!!! Now could you tell me how to move a blog from Blogger to WordPress? I’ve been doing this for about a year and am not the age of what I think most bloggers are. I didn’t even know what a blog was until my daughter told me I would like it. So, could you now write an article about people who read blogs and the proper etiquette for readers? My friends all want to know how much I am making on this. GASP! In any case-thanks so much for your info-it gives one a lot to think about.

I love food, I love going to new places, and I love cooking and trying new recipes. I really just would like to do it for fun. I would really love to start a food blog, and do it for free. anything you would recommend that is free??

You’ve given me so much great information that my brain now hurts. Thanks, I think. 🙂 I started a food blog just 3 months ago and I thought I did a sufficient amount of research beforehand. As with all other aspects of life, it turns out nothing compares to experience. I didn’t want to spend a lot of money up front because I wasn’t sure if I’d stick with it but since I’m 3 months in and receiving some great feedback, I think it’s time to step it up.

I wish I found this post before I got started because I made the rookie mistake of going through Blogger and I hate it. I’m ready to purchase a template (I’m currently using a free Blogger template) and sign up with BlueHost but I’m paid up with Blogger for 6 more months and I’d hate to waste that money (I know it’s not a lot, but still…). Do you think I’d be better off making all my changes at once or would it be ok to apply the new template and hosting while still with Blogger and shifting it all to WordPress before my Blogger account expires? Although I really hate Blogger, I’m now familiar with it and I guess I’m reluctant to switch. Any advice you have would be greatly appreciated.

It’s kind of up to you. A lot of the “premium” Blogger templates are good enough that you may not need to switch to WordPress. On the other hand, you will probably always be frustrated at the lack of customization options available. I say do it all at once, but that’s kind of just my style. 🙂 Whatever happens, I wish you the best of luck!

I decided to make the move… I’m just not happy with what Blogger offers. After scrolling through all the templates on the sites you recommended, I still can’t find *exactly* what I want so I decided to go with Thesis 2.0. I hope I’m not getting in over my head but if so, I can always exercise the “30-day money back guarantee” option!

I can’t tell you how much this post has helped me. Thanks so much for sharing your expertise!!

Thanks for such a great post!
I wanted to know, now that Thesis 2.0 is released, do you still think Genesis is still better?
Genesis is cheaper and there are many reviews praising it , but they are kind of outdated. Also the one thing that’s bothering me about Genesis is the fact that you can’t change whatever you want- there are a few customizations for the “clothes” you buy, but the clothes are still the same clothes for a plethora of blogs.
And the one thing that I don’t like on Thesis is the fact that there are just 12 months of upgrades unless you spend 197 bucks.

I found this post after I started with Blogger. My blog was already up and running when I decided I needed more customization so I made the switch to WordPress. I don’t know much about website design but I bought Thesis for $197 anyway. Since they have a money-back guarantee, I thought it was worth a try. I played with it for a few days and decided it’s still a little over my head so I contacted customer service and requested a refund; they replied within the hour and refunded my money right away.

I ended up buying Genesis Balance and overall I’m happy with it. At the time I needed to focus on getting my blog functional again, rather than trying to learn Thesis, so it was the right move for me. I hope to learn more about website design because I’d love to use Thesis to get things exactly how I want them. I’ll get there.

I guess it depends on how much time you have to learn Thesis (if you aren’t already familiar). If you do it, I’d say go for the $197 option so your upgrades aren’t limited. I tend to do what’s necessary to avoid regret but that’s just me. 🙂

No, Thesis doesn’t use code but I was brand new to any kind of website design (I’m more versed in graphic design) so it was too much for me to take on while setting up hosting and transferring my blog. It was almost like learning a new language with the skins and boxes and all that. I just didn’t have the time to spend on it, although I plan to soon.

I found this post to be very valuable… mostly for talking me out of starting a food blog for now, as I’m not prepared for it to be a business… I don’t think I’m focused enough on any one aspect (restaurants reviews, recipes, pictures, travel, etc.) to have a coherent food blog… maybe someday.

Thank you so much for this very thorough and detailed post about starting a food blog. This is extremely helpful to me as I am just starting out my food blog and have a ways to go before really establishing my online presence ! Looking forward to your blog

Thank you so much for this detailed post about starting a food blog.. I just want to make a blog for my up coming project but confused in where to start from… but this will help me a lot for making me a blog on food

Me and my friend is planning to have a food blog. It is more interesting for us than those the usual informative techy type blog. Reading your posts really helped us a lot on what to do with our food blog.

Thanks Malcolm, what a post, more info than you get in the average SuperAffiliateGuruPressButtonInstantWebsiteMillionaire ebook. Very readable. I use the excellent Artisteer for my themes, works just fine.

This is a fantastic article. I started a food blog two years ago. Starting a food blog is the easy part. Building it – well that’s where the real challenge is. When you said “tough to sustain”, it made me think. We eat everyday. I think everything that we eat is worthy of converting into an interesting blog post.

Hi Malcolm!
I have come back to this post again and again over the last few months, along with the posts about starting a food blog on Pinch of Yum and Food Loves Writing. I really appreciate the time you have put into this to help out newbies like me! All of this is a little overwhelming at first, but I am learning little by little. I definitely need to improve my food photography.

Do you have any tips on shooting photos at night? I normally cook at night and don’t have natural light.

An impressive share! I’ve just forwarded this onto a co-worker who was doing a little homework on this. And he actually bought me dinner simply because I discovered it for him… lol. So allow me to reword this…. Thanks for the meal!! But yeah, thanx for spending time to talk about this issue here on your web page.

Hi, I just want to thank you for the post. This guide to start a food blog is the most helpful one I’ve read so far. It’s very thorough, get to the point and somehow concise.You made good suggestions here. That’s why I can start out and build the basic of my blog within one day after I decided the blog’s name. I chose Bluehost, Elegant Themes and several plug-ins as you recommended, and they all worked out in a very nice way.
I have read this post for several times, even after the blog is running, since I can learn a bit of new things every time.
So I decided I should leave a comment this time. 🙂

This was incredibly informative and helpful! Thank you for your honestly and sharing your wealth of knowledge through experience! I am just starting my blog, and feel like my head is spinning, so I am very grateful to have this post to refer back to. Thank you!

Although not a food blogger, I do blog and I do eat food 🙂 this post was very informative, I thank you for taking the time to be so comprehensive.
My biggest challenge after I read pieces like this is fighting the urge to change up every single decision I’ve made relating to my blog. I did pop out several of your links to check out in an effort to streamline what I’m already doing.
Thanks again for taking the time.

Thank you for the helpful advice and information, I came across your article months ago when I was just starting to get my site up and running and it really helped me focus my efforts and get on track.
Now that I have been at it for nearly half a year, I wanted to give you guys proper thanks for the excellent information that got me going. I would love to know how many people you guys have inspired to launch sites of their own through this feature you have provided to the food blogging community and to those looking to jump in on the action.
Keep up the good work and stay hungry!

Thank you for all your helpful tips and comprehensive advice. I literally sat down an hour ago and typed into Google “how to start a food blog” and have been really overwhelmed and inspired by the information you’ve provided. Been toying with the idea for a while, and now I’m in a position to invest some serious time and energy into this new endeavor. I will be following a lot of your recommendations and am excited to begin!

Great post with tons of great information. However, you may want to update your Plug-ins section. Argo Links is no longer being developed or supported. Sounded like a cool plug-in, I was able to get it installed, but it could never find the links and after a couple of hours and some further web research, I discovered the last version they tested and developed on was 3.3.1.

Nice! And so much information. Wish I would have had this information when I started my blog 5 years ago. The one thing I did right was choose WordPress. Thank goodness. Pinning this one for when people ask me for help.

This was such an insightful read. I’m still new to the food blog world (Into month 4 after launching) and I’ve read tons of posts for “How to start a blog”. This was, by far, one of the most informative posts I’ve read and included tips I have not seen elsewhere.

Thanks for the great information on food blogging, you have given me some really informative info that I have already started to put to use. When I first started out I never thought I would have to spend so much time on promoting, learning or reading for my blog, but now that I have started it, is one of the best things I have ever done. I love it. Thanks

This is an amazingly informative post. I found it through google, searching for an answer about featuring other blogger’s recipes, but I am still not sure of something. Say, I want to feature My Favorite 10 Zucchini Recipes (or something similar)….showing a picture (from the blogger’s post), a description and why I like it, and a link back to that other blogger’s post. Do I contact that blogger and ask permission – especially since I would be using their picture? What is the blogger etiquette on something like this? I see it done all the time, but I can’t really find out how to go about doing it in the right way 🙂 That being said, I loved your post and thank you for sharing such a well-organized summary of what you have learned as a blogger!

Great post for new food bloggers, I’m sure the valuable information will help them moving forward.
Can I add something?
I would like to share this amazing post Right Keywords For The Recipes
Let me know what do you think.
Keep up the great work
Cheers

Hey guys, I have been planning a honeymoon to Italy, and my wife and I purchased some attractions tickets, for the Colosseum and BonAppetour dinners (a dining experience with locals: here is the link: http://www.bonappetour.com/l/romantic-getaways-in-rome)
If you guys want it, please let me know, I can sell them to you for a cheaper price!

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ADC’s are engineered to thrive in the new age data center and they
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delivery. Consequently, you might receive the food for
which you never placed an order for. In 2013, the online payment processing company, Pay – Pal, integrated
with Eat24, an online food routing switchboard service.

No words to explain my gratitude. I can simply say BIG THANKS. First, I need to bookmark this page and then bookmark all the other links specified in this tutorial. This post is really helpful for my new initiative – Food Recipes Easy.

Although the steps of the recipes are important, but the pictures play the major role to make a recipe blog success. I found many blogs overtake others by displaying some awesome recipe pictures even with less content.

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I have never needed the services of one as of yet, but I have always been curious what makes a good about equipment distributors.I would say about this topics.
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How do you know who will be a good site equipment for you?you should know which is your best for equipment distributors,
I have never needed the services of one as of yet, but I have always been curious what makes a good about equipment distributors.I would say about this topics.
Talk about something out of the part.

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Hey, this is the best blog for new food bloggers I have come across, I’ve added it to my favourites and will definately be revisiting it for advice in the future. The comment about ‘taking pictures of icicles’ lol! ……tickled my fancy 🙂

thyfood is a great brand name for any thing related to food ..
be it a blog , a cafe or restaurant, ttv show or website related to food.
its short catchy and easy to remember name…
have it for your show or blog or website or any food related biz…
so hurry up and make me an offer… for this wonderful brand name with domain .
thanx

hi to all,
thyfood is a great brand name for any thing related to food ..
be it a blog , a cafe or restaurant, ttv show or website related to food.
its short, catchy and easy to remember name…
have it for your show or blog or website or any food related biz…
so hurry up and make me an offer… for this wonderful brand name with domain .
all the best and thanx

Hi there . You have given me such a reality check on food blogging . Thank you so much for taking the time to provide beginners like me such insightful info . I can present all the stuff I have picked up and share with my website developer